FBI Log: Day Two
I’m beginning to get used to the house. Lots of places to hide things. Landline extensions in every room. Someone (probably Ben) disabled the callback and caller ID functions.
There’s a laptop in the kitchen that seems to be Amber’s. I’ve checked her browsing history. It’s all recipes, baby care, and upscale fashion sites—SaksFifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Prada, Chanel. Many emails from Amber to friends.
Ben never seems to use that computer. He has a desktop in his office. Started breaking in today but got called away to diaper duty. Ben’s daughter Hailey also has a laptop.
Amber seems innocent. Hailey is a spoiled brat. The baby is a sweetheart. But that’s not what you want to know.
Hard to overhear conversations. Ben takes all his calls in his office with the door closed, always on his cell. He’s never without it. Carries it with him practically 24/7, even in a bathrobe pocket.
And Ben’s car is spotless: no papers, no paper trail. His daughter says he’s a neat freak. Maybe he’s just paranoid.
Nothing to report except that Amber acts like she really needs me, trusts me, appreciates me.
Glad somebody does.
CHAPTER 19
TUMBLESTILTSKINSOUNDS LIKE A fairy tale, but it’s more like a circus that was swallowed by a gymnasium. It’s one giant, sunny double-height room with a huge red, blue, and yellow tent top on the ceiling and nothing but bright colors wherever you look—red-tiled walls, a yellow wood gym floor covered with pristine rainbow-colored mats. Over time, these mats must have seen their share of spit-up and worse. In other neighborhoods, you might have sensed that.
Not here.
We are greeted at the check-in desk by Darla and Kristy, two young attendants. Clearly, Amber called and toldthem to expect me. I know because one of them says, “You must be Carol.”
Should I bother correcting her?
“Oh, Lily, how cute you look today!” she continues.
I look at Lily. She’s right. Amber veers away from the frilly pink things most people choose for girls and instead splurges on French all-cotton gender-neutral onesies printed with gentle animals, like cows and bunnies. Today when I changed her after her poop explosion, I chose frogs and a sweet green headband. She looks great.
Darla (or is it Kristy?) gives me a quick overview. Tumblestiltskin is divided into three groups: crawlers (Baby Bees), non-crawlers (Baby Bumpkins), and toddlers. They point me and Lily in the Baby Bumpkin direction. We’re late, but we didn’t miss much. The first fifteen minutes are set aside for what’s known asfree play—well, as free as you can get for eight hundred dollars a semester.
I look around. It’s like I’ve wandered onto the set ofHoney, I Shrunk the Gym,filled with tiny rubber slides, swings, and seesaws that barely come up to my knee. I plop Lily on her stomach and roll a giant medicine ball over to her. She wiggles her hands like flippers in a pinball machine and tries to grab it, gurgling with joy. It moves just out of her reach. I bend to retrieve it,notgurgling with joy.
This gets old fast.
We wander past the Baby Bodywork area. Rumor has it a registered massage therapist is about to reveal the secret to massaging tender baby backs. I join the others clusteredaround the massage table, hoping to learn something. The secret, it turns out, is not to press too hard. That’s a secret? Even I know not to break bones. But I see several people nod as they type this into their cell phones.
Then a whistle blows (actually, it’s a gentle tweet). And it’s… Parachute Time! All of us babysitters, nannies, and moms plunk our babies down on a mat, grab the ends of a giant red-and-yellow parachute, and lift it up and down above them as we say pithy things like “Whee” and “Ooh.” Some of the babies giggle in the breeze. Some cry. Some get antsy. Lily is one of the gigglers. (You go, girl.) It turns out Parachute Time is an equal opportunity event for both Bees and Bumpkins. A couple of crawlers get on their hands and knees and try to escape. Who can blame them?
Soon it’s music time. Or, as they call it, Move and Groove—clearly a reverent nod to the 1960s. Now I’m happy. I’m a music teacher—this should be fun. But there’s a catch: We have to sit on the floor.
“Let’s all get comfortable,” Darla says. Between my own tender back and the foam padding that’s chafing me,comfortableain’t gonna happen. But good sport that I am, I plop down in a cross-legged position with Lily draped sideways on my lap.
Now comes the aerobics part of the class. Darla and Kristy burst into song—an interminably long version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”—and demonstrate the choreography using a rag doll. Onmooo,we stretch out our babies’ left arm. Onbaaa,we stretch the right, then lift their tushies onoink. I wait patiently to see what they’regoing to suggest forcock-a-doodle-do. Alas, roosters don’t seem to have made the cut. The song goes on until we have covered virtually every other animal on the farm, in the zoo, and in the wild. (Fun fact: A kangaroo grunts like an old man with hemorrhoids.)
Sitting on the floor with Lily on my lap is taking a toll on my skeletal structure. I should swallow my pride and ask for a chair, but I don’t.I can do this,I tell myself as we cycle through some of my old favorites (“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “The Wheels on the Bus,” “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands”). By the time we get to “I’m a Little Teapot,” I can’t feel my legs.
It takes a while for me to stand up, but Lily is patient. A lot of the babies around us are crabby after all the wiggling and stretching, but she’s still smiling. Lily is obviously more resilient than the other babies. Sweeter too. And nicer. Even—dare I say it?—moreadvanced.
I was expecting the worst, but today was not as terrible as it could have been. Besides, I now have something to write when Metcalf texts,Learn anything?
Me:Yes. The words to “Do Your Ears Hang Low?”
CHAPTER 20
LILY IS WORN OUT after Tumblestiltskin. That makes two of us. I’m hoping she’ll nap so I can do a little snooping before Amber comes home, but no such luck. Lily wiggles and squirms in the crib, on the verge of crying. She’s what my late mother would have calledovertired—too tired to sleep, which is something I’ve never quite understood. It makes about as much sense as being too hungry to eat.
